Can gestures lend a hand when learning placement event descriptions in L2 Dutch?
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2025-08-29
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en
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L2 learners have to link novel L2 word forms to L1 meaning concepts. L1 meanings can be too specific or general for L2 forms, so semantic reorganisation of L1 meanings is required. This occurs frequently in the field of placement event descriptions, since languages have varying sizes of placement verb inventories. Research has shown that gestures can aid L2 vocabulary acquisition, so the current study investigates if gestures can also facilitate the learning of placement verbs in L2 Dutch. Participants took part in a training session, preceded by a pre-test and followed by a post-test. The training session involved an explanation video, either including or excluding gestures. Contrary to what was expected, the test difference scores of the participants in the gesture condition did not differ significantly from those in the no-gesture condition, suggesting it is trivial whether or not one uses gestures to explain placement verbs in L2 Dutch.
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